Went out to see Memento last night. I’d been curious about this one ever since I started hearing about it, and even more curious once I saw the trailer. The main character has suffered a brain injury, and has a condition where he cannot form any new memories. The last thing he can actually remember is his wife’s murder — everything else that happens to him fades in a few minutes. He can’t remember anyone for more than just a couple minutes, if conversations last too long he won’t know how they got started…interesting enough on its own, but during the film, he’s actually trying to track down the man who raped and killed his wife. Notes all over the place, key clues tattooed onto his body…a man obsessed, but incapacitated by being completely limited to short term memory. In addition, the film is told in an extremely ‘dis-linear’ (the director’s term) style…in other words, it doesn’t start at the beginning and end at the end. Similar to Pulp Fiction, only more. Very, very cool — certainly the best film I’ve seen so far in 2001, and I’m so looking forward to it coming out for sale — I need to watch it quite a few more times just to make sure I’m seeing everything correctly!
Memento
But will I remember it?
Just found out about a movie that I’m now really looking forward to seeing when it comes out — March 16th is the release date for the U.S., but who knows when it will actually show up here in Alaska. Anyway, it’s a flick called Memento, and sounds just fascinating. Rather than butcher the description by doing it myself, I’ll just give you the brief summary from Coming Attractions‘ page about the movie:
After suffering trauma, a man named Leonard now has a rare form of amnesia, preventing him from remembering anything in his short term memory. He forgets the start of the conversation he’ll have with you, or where he was going, or whom he’s spoken with. To jolt his memory, Leonard writes down fragments of his life on scraps of paper, so when he reads them again he’ll remember. He even goes as far as to write the important things he needs to remember on his body. When Leonard awoke this morning he read his chest: John G Raped And Murdered My Wife. Now Leonard knows what he was doing yesterday. But when your mind forgets who you can trust and who is your enemy, how can you ever hope to solve a mystery?
For more information, and an absolute slew of not just good, but outstanding reviews, check out this page, or if you’ve got the bandwidth to handle it, check out the trailer.